


How to Win Friends and then Use Them

by ap_trash_compactor



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Awkwardness, Drugs, Embarrassment, F/M, References to Drugs, Second-Hand Embarrassment, fluff friday, thryce discord fluff friday
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 03:13:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16054292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ap_trash_compactor/pseuds/ap_trash_compactor
Summary: What if the timeline of events at the Ascension Week party at the Alisandre had been a little different? Cue: Lights. Camera. Disaster.





	How to Win Friends and then Use Them

**Author's Note:**

> I hope the AU elements explain themselves /just/ well enough to carry you through Part I. Part II, next week, is meant to clarify the things that certain parties are still a little unclear on. (Which, hopefully, make sense in context as well.) Originally inspired by this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/shockproofbeats/status/992006545473966082?lang=en

Thrawn doesn't quite kick Eli in the head as he’s scrambling into the back seat of their speeder to stop their blissful and oblivious informant Arihnda Pryce from cheerfully plummeting through a few thousand levels of open air to an undignified doom, but it's a near thing. Eli flinches out of the way of a momentarily flailing boot, rights their speeder, and grimaces at the traffic ahead of them.   
  
From behind him, he hears a squawk of protest, the thud of the door, something that sounds like a bit of scuffling, and then a mostly unintelligible comment in a confused, hurt tone. Somewhere in the childish slurring he thinks he hears the words “pretty,” and “lights,” and possibly, “wanna go for a walk.”   
  
“I know you do,” Thrawn says, soothingly. “We can go for a walk later.”   
  
“Oh,” she says, sounding somewhat mollified. “Thassokay I guess.” Then, in the slow voice of wondering discovery, she says: “Oh… You’ve got very pretty lights, too.”   
  
“Do I?” says Thrawn, audibly fighting what will probably be a losing battle against a rising tide of laughter. “How very interesting.”   
  
Eli grimaces. Again. All in all, this hasn't been his favorite evening in Imperial service.   
  
~*~   
  
It had started out alright, considering the circumstances.    
  
After being dumped planet-side by Captain Rossi, they’d been dragged back to Coruscant, where somehow Thrawn had ended up at the Ubiqtorate headquarters — probably, Eli had thought, for reasons related to the way he’d come into the Navy in the first place — and while he was there, he’d managed to make friends with Colonel Wullf Yularen, former head of the NIA, current Deputy Director of the ISB.   
  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” Eli had said, flustered, when Thrawn had summoned him to Yularen’s own personal office in Ubiqtorate headquarters and introduced them.   
  
“Likewise, of course,” Yularen had said easily, holding out a hand. “What’s that accent you’ve got, Wild Space?”   
  
“Yes, sir,” Eli had said tightly, turning an embarrassing color and biting down on his sudden frustration. Bad enough that he’d only get to see the inside of Ubiqtorate HQ while being brought up on court-martial, and now this — Eli didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way he talked, but leave it to a Coruscant native to make a point about it.   
  
But Yularen hadn’t been critical; quite the opposite, in fact. “Good! Good, I’m from Coruscant, myself, but I’ve always found many of our best and brightest come from outside the Core Worlds. Where are you from, exactly?”   
  
“Lysatra,” Eli had said, the word coming out a little less smoothly than he’d hoped.   
  
“Ensign Vanto has family expertise in logistics and supply,” Thrawn had said, picking up where Eli, embarrassed by the sudden spotlight, felt himself falling flat. “He is also well-versed in the more obscure languages of the region. He has provided invaluable assistance to me during my time in Imperial Service, and he played a significant role in saving the crew of the Dromedar.”   
  
“Well, good.” Yularen had said, looking Eli up and down once more.   
  
Eli, who privately disagreed that he’d played any useful role at all aboard the Dromedar, had felt like he might turn a previously undiscovered shade of puce.   
  
“That was some very fine work on the Dromedar,” Yularen had gone on, “and I’m of course keen to help both of you however I can.”   
  
“We are most grateful, Colonel,” Thrawn had said. “Any advice you might provide for navigating the Judicial panel –“   
  
“Oh, I can do better than that,” Yularen had said. “I’ll be taking you to the Alisandre for their Ascension Week reception, tonight.”   
  
Eli’s face had gone from burning to freezing in an instant.   
  
“Half the Senate will be there,” Yularen had continued, “so be prepared to make new friends.”   
  
At least, Eli had thought bitterly, they didn’t have to worry about trying to purchase clothes for the occasion. Going in uniform was a lot better than going into debt for the kind of multi-thousand-credit outfits people usually wore to those things.   
  
Being at the Alisandre hadn’t been so terrible either, at first. Boring, stressful, and awkward — yes. Bad? Not really. Not quite bad enough for bad, as his father used to say. Yularen had been a good guide, and Thrawn, it turned out, was pretty good at navigating one-on-ones with grasping politicos who very obviously perceived him as a potential trophy of some kind. The only moments that had been overtly unpleasant for Eli were when Thrawn had tossed some conversational cue in his direction.    
  
At least, that had been true until they met Senator Renking. Or rather, until Renking’s aide Arihnda Pryce had joined the conversation.   
  
That had definitely been bad enough for bad.   
  
She’d arrived almost at the exact moment that Yularen had introduced them to Renking. At first, Eli had mistaken her for one of the drunk looky-loo types trying to take a closer peek at Thrawn, or maybe at Yularen — but then Renking had seen her, and had lit up like an advert board, and Eli had descended into his own very special brand of hell.   
  
“Ah, Arihnda! So glad you’re back,” Renking had said, “Everything go well with Moff Ghadi?”   
  
She’d jerked a little, blinking herself back into reality, and Eli had begun to have the sinking feeling that alcohol wasn’t her problem at all.    
  
“Yes, of course, Senator” she’d said, a little slowly, like she’d temporarily forgotten how to talk. Her accent was almost Coruscant-crisp, but only almost. Another outsider, then. 

Another outsider, Eli had thought, his stomach slowly sinking a little lower, who looked exactly as foolish as Eli himself privately felt.

“Well, good,” Renking had said, starting to sound a little concerned, but clearly not wanting to discuss whatever had been going on with Ghadi in front of company. “Why don’t you come join us?”   
  
“Oh, yes, Senator,” she’d said. And then she’d walked into their group, much more slowly than was necessary, as if she were having trouble judging the distance.   
  
The sinking feeling in Eli’s stomach had become something more like a pit. 

It was one thing to grit his teeth through occasional brushes with drunk and disorderly types who no one wanted to talk to, but Senators didn't generally light up and extend invitations to just any old underling, especially not when someone like Yularen was involved — and no Senator’s aide earned that kind of regard without working pretty kriffing hard for it.

That didn't happen by showing up at your boss’ side obviously high on spice. But showing up somewhere like this high on spice was pretty much a guaranteed way to lose that regard, along with anything else you’d ever worked for. Eli had looked down at his champagne flute and found himself hoping that whatever happened next, it wouldn't last too long… And that it wouldn't be too painful to watch.

“Well,” Renking had said when she’d swayed to a stop beside him, clearing his throat and trying to recover the increasingly awkward moment, “tell me again what brings you gentlemen to Coruscant?”   
  
Yularen had slowly pulled his attention from Arihnda to Renking, and given an abbreviated version of the Dromedar incident, edging around the precise details.   
  
“Oh,” Arihnda had said, a little overly-loud, “and by data-work you mean court-martial?”   
  
Beside him, Thrawn had turned his face towards her and said, with perfect politeness, “Indeed he does.”   
  
_ Oh, kriff,  _ Eli had thought, feeling his face start to heat,  _ oh, kriff, please don’t start talking. _ __  
  
She hadn’t obliged.   
  
“Because you’re you, I’m guessing?” She’d said to Thrawn. “I mean —” she’d made a vague gesture at him. “I love Coruscant — I just love Coruscant —” she had gestured again at the milieu around them, turning her body as she did — “but it’s…” she’d turned back to them, frowning, looking somehow internal, “it’s a little… unwelcoming… sometimes.” Then she’d brightened. “But it’s not so hard to make friends here. It’s the best place, really. So what did you lose, that you’re here trying to make friends?”   
  
“Ah, Arihnda —” Renking had said, clearing his throat again —   
  
“Tibana gas,” Thrawn had said lightly.    
  
Eli had turned his attention from Arihnda to stare in horror at Thrawn, who was in turn looking at Arihnda with perfectly mild attentiveness, as if this were a conversation of real interest. If this was his version of trying to graciously help her save face, something Eli had seen him do for fumbling, overwhelmed, outmatched junior officers dozens of times since being assigned to the Blood Crow, it was just about the worst job of it Eli had ever seen him do.   
  
“Tibana gas?” she’d asked, eyes going wide. She’d given a low whistle and rocked back on her heels. “You need… you need to make a lot of friends.”   
  
“Arihnda—” Renking had begun again in a low, hissing tone.   
  
“Do you think so?” Thrawn had asked mildly. Eli had almost kicked him. Thrawn wasn’t the type to make sport out of embarrassing people in public, not unless they really, really deserved it, so what the kriff —   
  
“Definitely,” she’d said, sounding serious. “That stuff’s worth even more than doonium — and the Empire’s mad for both right now, buying them both up like mad, absolutely like mad, way more than they ought to need based on the size of the fleet, or even future-force projections. And I don’t mean the public projections,” she’d added, sounding a little conspiratorial. “I mean the real production numbers. Trust me. I know.”    
  
Renking had been staring at her, horrified. “Arihnda,” he’d said, sounding like a man trying to shove something unattractive into a closet while guests were walking in the front door of his home, “do you think you could do me a favor and —”   
  
“Tell me about the real production numbers,” Thrawn had said, as if Renking had not been speaking at all.   
  
_ Kriffing – you couldn’t just let Renking shuffle her off? _ But Eli, feeling like a droid who’d gotten stuck in a Jawa-built trap, hadn’t been able to think of any way to gently shuffle her off himself, not without making a bad situation ten or twelve times worse, and she’d taken Thrawn’s cue and was running her mouth again —   
  
“Oh, those are easy to get if you know where to look,” Arihnda had said with casual self-satisfaction. “I make it a point to know what the doonium markets are doing, don’t I, Domus?” Then she’d snickered nastily, for a second. “Anyway,” she’d said, catching her breath, “the Navy has, what, 25,000 Star Destroyers? About 24 per sector, for a little over a thousand sectors? And that’s what they use the most doonium for — and tibana. It’s mostly for Star Destroyers, not cruisers or anything light. Too expensive to use for anything but the good stuff, you know. So, you’d expect a major buildup in those to correspond to the increased purchasing of tibana and doonium, thousands upon thousands of new ships, really, almost like there’s a war being planned — which, maybe there is, the Outer Rim is awfully  __ unruly , isn’t it, Domus?” She’d snickered, again. “Anyway, you’d expect a buildup, but there isn’t one. Public records only reference plans to maintain current fleet levels — which doesn’t mean much, but the shipyards aren’t doing anything above that, either, so that’s what I’d call the real production numbers. Way out of whack with what’s being purchased — my family used to own a mine, we had a doonium vein, I keep up with the old family friends, you know, I know how much the Empire is buying. Anyway, doonium isn’t that heavily used in ship production these days anyway, hasn’t been since the Clone Wars, but here they are, buying it up like crazy. It’s used so little they’ve got enough to make almost a quarter again the fleet, but no one’s using it.” Then she’d frowned. “Except for whoever is using it, I mean,” she’d said with slow puzzlement. Her frown had cleared, and she’d smiled again, a weird, strained expression, like she couldn’t quite remember how to arrange the pieces of her face. “Almost all the purchasing is coming from the Empire,” she’d gone on repetitively, “but none of the Imperial shipyards are increasing production beyond what’s needed for maintenance. The doonium and the tibana aren’t even going to the yards, from what I can find out. Did I already say that? But, anyway, whoever is using it is in the Empire, and wants a lot of it, and probably doesn’t want anyone knowing what they’re doing.” She’d swayed a little, and put a hand to her head, then shaken it off. “Well, anyway. Someone does want an awful lot of it. And whoever they are must be very important. So…” she’d swayed again.   
  
“So we need a great many valuable friends,” Thrawn had finished for her, now sounding, to Eli’s infuriated horror, entertained.   
  
“Yes!” she’d exclaimed with delight. “Yes, I was just going to say that!”   
  
“Well,” Renking had said, angrily, “Arihnda’s very keen, you can see, on all Imperial matters.”    
  
Beside him, her shoulders slumping slightly, Arihnda had started frowning again, and was pressing a hand tentatively to her face, as if trying to press her own confused discomfort out of her head. Watching her, Eli had winced.   
  
“Indeed,” Thrawn had said graciously. “And impressively informed, I believe.”   
  
“Yes, I am, thank you,” she’s said, brightening suddenly, straightening up. That was clearly a bad idea, because she’d swayed again, listing almost off her feet, and Eli had been about to move forward himself, when Thrawn had finally done something almost sensible and stepped into the middle of their little circle, reached out his free hand, and steadied her, holding her upright with a tight grasp on her upper arm. She’d tilted her head like a bird, blinking in confusion at Thrawn’s hand, while Thrawn had turned towards Yularen.   
  
“Colonel,” Thrawn had said politely, “perhaps Lieutenant Vanto and I could assist Ms. Pryce to some more suitable setting where she can rest, and rejoin you after?”   
  
Yularen’s brows had risen, but he had only said, graciously: “Of course.”    
  
Thrawn had turned politely to Renking. “Senator.”   
  
“Do whatever you like with her,” Renking had growled with venom.   
  
Eli’s hand had tightened on his champagne flute so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised to feel it shatter. It probably wasn’t a good idea to sock an Imperial Senator on the jaw, but if there was ever a time —   
  
“Indeed,” Thrawn had said icily. Eli had looked at him. Thrawn’s expression had been pure ice, too. “Ensign Vanto,” Thrawn had said, looking away from Renking the way someone might look away from a pile of Rancor droppings, “with me, if you would.”   
  
“Sir,” Eli had said tightly, “right behind you.”   
  
And that was how Thrawn and Eli had ended up sweeping the extremely spiced-up Arihnda Pryce gently from the Alisandre and into the back of their Navy speeder.   
  
~*~   
  
And why Eli, stewing with mild irritation, finds himself driving them all to the home address Thrawn had coaxed out of Arihnda on their way out of the hotel.   
  
Behind him, Eli hears something else that sounds like a scuffle, but it’s muted, and shorter.

“Do not —” Thrawn starts to say warningly.

“I just want to look,” she says, sounding confused again, and a little annoyed.   
  
“Carefully,” says Thrawn.   
  
Eli risks another look behind him. Pryce is pressing herself up against the door, her hands flat against the window, her nose practically glued to the glass; there is soft, almost romantic delight on her face. Thrawn is close behind her, holding her waist. Making sure she doesn’t tumble out into the air if she tries to open the door again, maybe?   
  
Thrawn catches Eli’s eye. “How much farther?” he asks softly, as if not to interrupt their passenger’s reverie.   
  
“Ah –“ Another speeder honks at him. Eli jerks his attention back to the traffic. “Ah, twenty minutes, maybe?”   
  
Thrawn makes a noncommittal noise, then says: “Can you find a faster route, perhaps?”   
  
“I can try.”   
  
“Please do.”   
  
Behind him, Eli hears Arihnda start to speak.   
  
“‘S beautiful,” she says, wrapped up in herself. Her diction is alright, but she’s clearly still not entirely present. “Never thought I’d live anywhere like it — The most beautiful place — My home wasn’t like this. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”   
  
“Of course,” Thrawn says politely.   
  
“What,” she says, apparently struggling to be conversational, “wha’about -” there’s another rustling sound from the back seat, a shifting of bodies - “what about your home? Did your home look like this?”   
  
A slight pause, and then, politely: “No.”   
  
Another pause. Then, from Arihnda, awkward, flat, disappointed, unsure if she’s made a mistake: “Oh.”   
  
Eli risks another glance behind him. She’s sitting half in Thrawn’s lap, looking baffled by everything; she has one hand on his chest, and her brow is furrowed with what looks like extreme concentration. Thrawn is still holding her, maybe holding her up; she seems unsteady. Thrawn’s head is tilted a little, and he seems to be watching her face with interest.   
  
“Tell me what else you know about doonium,” he says.   
  
“Doonium?”   
  
“If you would.”   
  
“Dooooo-neeeee-um.” She repeats, giggling slightly. Then she says: “Stupid word,” with weird, ironic venom.

Eli returns his attention to the traffic, shaking his head. He doesn’t think there’s going to be much sense to be gotten out of her.   
  
But Thrawn seems to manage.    
  
Eli thinks it’s not a conversation he would want to navigate, not a conversation he really thinks is even worth navigating, but if Thrawn thinks there’s some value in it besides a chance to cop a feel — which doesn’t seem very Thawn-like, and doesn’t seem to be what’s happening back there anyway, no matter how close the two of them are sitting — then, Eli thinks, maybe there’s something he’s missing.   
  
Maybe.   
  
Then again, Eli doesn’t really know why Thrawn’s so hung up on doonium or Clone Wars tech, anyway. It’s not the first time Thrawn’s gotten a little fixated on either.   
  
The conversation takes some wandering turns. Talking about doonium turns to talking about her childhood, about herself, about her family, her work for Renking —   
  
And then the conversation hurtles completely off the rails. Eli hears a hitch in her breathing, a hiccup, a low moan: “Oh, God, I’m fired.” Another moaning, hitching breath. “I’m going to be fired.” The last word climbs into an almost comical wail.   
  
“Yes,” Thrawn agrees lightly, “I doubt that Senator Renking will keep you in his employ after this display.”   
  
Eli half turns in his seat, ready to stop biting his tongue and ask just what that’s supposed to accomplish, when Arihnda preempts him, more with volume than anything else.   
  
“Oh, God,” she wails angrily, her mood spinning like a TIE fighter. “God, why would you say that?” She’s sniffling loudly and indignantly. “What’s wrong with you? Why would you say that?”   
  
“Because it is true. You are clearly under the influence of narcotics of some kind, and presented yourself in such a state in professional company. I would not continue to employ you after such a display.”   
  
“Dis— displ— I was  _ trying _ to  _ warn _ him —” Her hiccups sound very angry. “Moff Ghadi —” she breaks off in an angry, drawn-out, hitching gasp that isn’t angry or funny at all, and that makes Eli’s heart twist sharply in his chest — “ _ he _ did it.”   
  
A short silence. “Explain,” says Thrawn.   
  
In fits and starts she tells him how almost the second she'd arrived at the party she'd been sent off to deliver a data card to a Moff, simple enough, except that the Moff apparently thought it was loaded with a thief program, or some other nasty bit of slice-work — which Eli thought was probably true, and which perfectly explained why Renking hadn’t wanted to ask her about it in front of Yularen. 

And then, in even more uneven fragments, she tells the rest of it: the reason she’d shown up in the ballroom sweating and disoriented, holding herself together with stick-splints. She tells Thrawn how Ghadi had tried to pass a fake card back to her, and how she'd recognized the trick, and how Ghadi had decided to deal with the inconvenience by…

As she talks, Eli feels his hands tightening on the steering wheel until his knuckles are white.

Ghadi had decided to deal with her her by throwing powdered spice in her face. Pure spice, a whole handful, on someone who had never taken it before.

The whole thing is typical fancy-hat crap, Eli thinks with furious disgust. It’s a typical, kryat-spit power play between them. It’s kriffing typical of them to use someone disposable from some backwater edge of the galaxy to do it. It’s all incredibly, revoltingly typical.

  
“I see,” says Thrawn quietly when she’s done.    
  
She makes another hurt, angry sniffling sound. “I’d’ve never —” she says, but she doesn’t finish. She is crying again: soft, small,  _ extremely  _ angry noises.    
  
“I believe you,” says Thrawn gently, “and I will discuss this matter with Colonel Yularen. Perhaps there is a solution. What prospects do you think there are, Ensign Vanto?”   
  
“Ah,” Eli says, forcing his hands to loosen on the steering wheel, “I mean, the problem is that her word’s not gonna matter much against a Moff’s. Neither he nor Renking are gonna wanna own up to any of it, and he and Renking can both just write it off as a lie from a spice-head who’s angry about a back-data assignment gone ba –“   
  
Eli doesn’t get to finish the word “bad” before Arihnda launches herself into the front seat, or tries to.   
  
“You —” she shrieks while Thrawn drags her bodily back from her abortive lunge — “how dare —” she struggles against Thrawn and grabs for Eli’s hair — “you crink-faced —”   
  
“Hey!” Eli shouts, shoving her hand away and trying to keep the speeder steady. “Hey, kriff off!”   
  
“Enough!” Thrawn roars over both of them. There’s another half-moment of angry struggle in the backseat while Eli rights the speeder.   
  
“I would never,” Arihnda is saying with passionate bitterness.   
  
“Enough,” Thrawn says again, tone sharp. “Ensign Vanto, I presume ‘back-data assignment’ is a rather insulting euphemism for acquiring information in exchange for sex — obtaining data while on one’s back?”   
  
“Yes, sir,” says Eli, almost preemptively flinching against a renewed assault.   
  
“I would never,” she says again, prideful and offended.   
  
“Yes, thank you,” Thrawn snarls quietly. “You have already said it, and no one is arguing the point.” He takes a deep breath. Arihnda has gone back to sniffling, indignantly. “Ensign Vanto, what chances do you think there are, notwithstanding matters of rank?”   
  
“Well,” Eli says, starting to feel a little steadier, “if she can prove it —”   
  
“Prove!” she shrieks suddenly through her tears. “I’ve got the data card!”     
  
“Yes, thank you,” says Thrawn, a little more exasperated than angry this time. “Please continue, Vanto.”   
  
“Well, I guess it’s possible that Ghadi might go to jail for possession of spice if he's got any of it laying around his office, and if he’s got the raw stuff Yularen might be able to get him for something worse. And if he times his questions right, maybe Yularen can get him to produce the data card that Renking was supposedly using for the slice-job, then I guess she can testify that it’s the one Renking gave her, if she can recognize it —”   
  
“Of course I can recognize it,” she snaps with surprising clarity. “I recognized the fake, didn’t I?”   
  
“Yes,” says Thrawn, suddenly sounding interested in her again. “Tell me, how did you know they were switched?”   
  
She sniffs disdainfully. “Ghadi’s fake was embossed, not etched,” she says with a bit of hauter. “It’s cheaper, you know. He probably didn’t want to waste money on it.” She sniffs again, and adds bitterly: “Credit-wise and value-stupid, mother would say.”   
  
“Indeed,” says Thrawn. “And you recognized the difference?”   
  
“Of course I did,” she bites out, thoroughly affronted.

“I believe you. There is no need to shout.”   
  
“Wouldn’t be shouting if you weren’t being so horrid,” she mutters.   
  
“I apologize,” says Thrawn with gentle amusement. “I shall endeavor to be less horrid.”   
  
“Mmmm,” she says. There’s another sound of rustling, of movement. “”S alright,” she mumbles. And almost instantly she starts snoring.   
  
“Yes, I see that it is,” Thrawn says, the same soft amusement lacing his tone. Eli takes another backward glance. She is curled against Thrawn’s chest, her eyes closed, her mouth open. Thrawn looks at Eli. Whatever amusement there had been in his tone, it’s gone.   
  
“How much chance do you think there is of our laying blame on the responsible parties?” Thrawn asks softly, leaning forward a little, holding the now very soundly sleeping Arihnda Pryce against him.   
  
“Ah, I mean —” Eli starts, then frowns. Hasn't the whole point of their evening been that sometimes, it’s not about what you know, but who? “Well,” he says a little slowly, “if we can sell Yularen on the story, actually, pretty damn good."

 

 


End file.
